Thursday, February 5, 2009

ANZ Ladies Masters Thursday: Big Names Lurking

Becky Brewerton and Marianne Skarpnord of the LET and Il-Hee Lee of the KLPGA opened the ANZ Ladies Masters with a trio of 5-under-par 67s, opening a 1-shot lead on Ursula Wikstrom, Carmen Alonso, Hye Youn Kim, Stacy Bregman, and Lee-Ann Pace (who still has the 18th left to play), but some of the biggest names in the field are lurking between 2 and 5 shots back. Here's a quick breakdown of how the more recognizable players have done or are doing today:

[Update 1 (3:27 am): South Africa's Lee-Ann Pace and Korea's Aram Cho both birdied 18 to move to -5 and E, respectively, while Na and Matharu parred out. I've changed the results above to reflect these results. The early interviews with the leaders and Karrie Webb are quite good. Brewerton came back from a mid-round double bogey and credits her work in the gym and in her head with her improved play. Another look at the field list reveals that Ashleigh Simon and Becky Morgan were late WDs (and that the LPGA's H.J. Choi was never in the field--I confused the '08 KLPGA Rookie of the Year He Yong Choi with her in my preview). More on specific rounds soon.]

[Update 2 (3:47 am): A few scorecards of interest include Hull's (she made 3 birdies in a row as she made the turn and birdied her final hole to offset an intervening bogey), Walshe's (she was +2 through her 1st 4 holes after back-to-back bogeys, but made 5 birdies in her last 14), Kang's (she bounced back from her lone bogey of the day on the back with back-to-back birdies), Tseng's (she was the opposite story, starting off -2 through 5, but could only manage 12 pars and a bogey the rest of the way), Miyazato's (she had quite the roller-coaster round, including back-to-back bogeys as she made the turn to fall back to E and 2 birdies in her last 4 holes to offset her bogey on the short par-4 8th), and Recari's (she bogeyed 3 holes in a row and 4 of her 1st 7, but turned it around with 4 birdies and only 1 bogey in her last 11.]